A Life Free of Violence is Our Right

TUFF LOVE on violence, manhood, and race

Men are awakening to their responsibilities in violence awareness and prevention. It starts with talk and ends with personal changes-how we think about manhood and why we must "rethink" manhood.
It's not merely a matter of playing games about who's more violent. But it is time that men 'man-up' and reexamine the key role they play in violence prevention, how socialized we all are, men and women toward complacency, what new behaviors we must demand of men, and how me are bound to redress the women who, as co-dependents, prevent and protect men from ever growing up.

In this article, Michael and Cliff have done the 'man-up' thing and put the issue under the spotlight. That harsh spotlight needs to remain on until we eliminate the threat that 'normalizing violence' plays in our societies worldwide.
As I have repeated, violence and manhood aren't just the responsibility of those who believe they are "decent men". Listen up, decent men. Let's hear more from the rest of you, not the words, but the deeds.
Read and comment:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/michael-kimmel/the-unbearable-whiteness-_2_b_2350931.html

"A Place of lasting vision"

"A Place of Lasting vision"

These are days of challenge, struggle, and opportunity in every nation and among all people, women and men, youth, children, and elders. Before us, the challenges ask that we embark on what Black Elk called a vision quest, a life journey that will change us from who we are now to who we might become. Easy words to say; harder to make happen amidst the current chaos and insecurity in all nations. Black Elk refers to a power we can engage when we examine the power of the circle manifested in so many aspects of the natural world. There are lessons to learn for human brings in the circularity, harmony, and eternal power of nature.
This past Monday (December 10), I facilitated a Study Circle on 'Gender Equality: Why We Must Achieve It' in London, co-sponsored by Global Network 21 (a UK-based civil society group) and held at the National Baha'i Centre with great success. We hope that all who attended were enriched by these first discussions and thank you for your indispensable contributions and your generous joy. The 'welcoming partnership' has begun. Please take the concept of the Study Circle into your families, neighborhoods, and the workplace to create "a place of ritual, a place of prayer, a place of lasting vision" and report back from the new frontier!

Interdisciplinary rigor-the 'realpolitik'-Track violence with David Kobia on Ushahidi

 The violence pandemic (quantitative research in public health) has us all in what Nobel Prize author Wole Soyinka's book title calls a "Climate of Fear"(literature). Detection skills (criminal justice) for receiving and sending critical data (communication studies) on impending outbreaks (forecasting) of  violence (deviant social behavior) is now in the hands of technology (computer science) and its innovators. Listen and learn (right & left brain) about how a software tool originally developed to track election (political science) violence in 2007 is being applied to other human survival projects.

David Kobia on Ushahidi